Austrian startup garners USD 10.3 million in investments

The Austrian startup Bitmovin offers video infrastructure for the Internet. The investment fund Atomico of London which specializes in high-tech companies was lured as the main investor during a round of financing.

The funds will be used to further develop the existing video infrastructure, which is used, amongst other applications, for virtual reality and 360° video. The money raised is also designed to further expand the company’s offices in Klagenfurt and Silicon Valley.

Stefan Lederer and Christopher Müller, the two founders, studied at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt and established Bitmovin during their study time. While the two were completing their college education, they participated in standardizing MPGEG-DASH, an industry standard for video streaming. The process is used, for example, by Netflix and YouTube.

The two entrepreneurs later took advantage of their know-how to use Bitmovin as the platform for developing an encoding service for developers and integrators, including a programming interface. Moreover, solutions were made available for virtual reality and 360° videos. The HTML5 player offered by Bitmovin supports a series of end devices such as desktop PCs, smart phone, smart TVs and virtual reality headsets. The patented technology developed by Bitmovin shortens video loading times to less than 150 milliseconds and thus helps users avoid cumbersome waiting times.